Tough Games Sought By Ecu

Dave Fairbank

August 26, 2008|By DAVE FAIRBANK

GREENVILLE, N.C. — Eight months after its last bowl game, East Carolina's football team plays its next one. The schedule says it's actually the 2008 regular-season opener, but why quibble over details?

Here's what the Pirates and Eyepatch Nation know: They're playing the defending ACC champs, at a neutral site, in an NFL stadium, on national TV.

When you reside in a geographically dysfunctional league that receives only grudging acceptance from the power conferences, the chance to play Virginia Tech at the Carolina Panthers' stadium in Charlotte, N.C., takes on a shade more heft.

"To walk into the first game of the year and have it be kind of like a BCS bowl environment will be very exciting," ECU coach Skip Holtz said Monday. "I know our players are very excited and I think it will be a great measuring stick for our program and the progress that we've made in the last year."

The Pirates went 8-5 last year, giving them back-to-back winning seasons for the first time since 1999-2000. They beat Boise State at the gun in the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl, the program's first postseason win since 2000.

ECU returns 15 starters, nine on defense, but duplicating last year's success won't be easy. There is the travel built in to the Conference USA schedule, as well as one of the more ambitious non-conference schedules in the country.

After opening with the Hokies, East Carolina faces defending Big East champ and eighth-ranked West Virginia. The Pirates also have road games at regional rivals North Carolina State and Virginia. They are one of only five non-BCS programs that play four non-league games against BCS opponents.

"You'd like to think we could be successful, even without the schedule being as good as it is," ECU athletic director Terry Holland said. "But to be honest, that certainly has accelerated the process - the ability to fill up the stadium, to create a great game-day atmosphere, which obviously has helped our recruiting, as well as our marketing and the ability to sell tickets."

The geographic monstrosity that is Conference USA caused Holland to think and schedule boldly. There are no gimmes in the foreseeable future to pad the record. ECU is in the midst of a nine-game series with the Hokies. There are future games against North Carolina and N.C. State, as well as West Virginia. A five-game series against South Carolina starts in 2011, with two of those games in Charlotte.

"I love the excitement and energy it creates in our program right now," Holtz said of Saturday's opener, "but at the same time I hate not only the inexperience that's going to walk into that stadium at a couple of positions, but the level that that inexperience has to perform at, right out of the chute in the first game."

Benevolent dictator that he is, Holland doesn't hold Holtz's non-conference or overall record against him. Holland knows that he could have scheduled softer.

"There's risk either way you go," he said. "We really do look at it as, we want to be fan friendly. We know that our bread and butter for the long term is playing games that our fans want to see - preferably playing them at times when they can see them, as opposed to some other day of the week, or even at the wrong time on a Saturday."

Indeed, some non-BCS leagues and programs would schedule games on Wednesday mornings in a parking garage if TV cameras agreed to show them. Plenty of BCS teams would do so as well, so powerful is the lure of TV exposure.

But Holland limits the compromises to the fan base.

"Regardless of the financial reward," he said, "we know that our long-term financial reward is with our fan base, as opposed to television dollars. Because if we're not any good, television's not going to want us. And if we don't have a great crowd and a great atmosphere, they're not going to want us."

The Pirates have made some noise in their non-conference games. They beat North Carolina last year, N.C. State and Virginia two years ago.

They opened against Tech last year as well and more than held their own. They lost 17-7 in the first football game in Blacksburg following the April 16, 2007, campus shootings.

"I don't think you gain confidence just playing close," Holtz said. "I think your confidence level comes from knowing that you know what you're doing and how to do it, and you can do all the little things that give you a pretty good chance to succeed, and we're not there yet.

"I want to make sure we don't walk into that stadium with a false sense of security or false confidence, just because we played them close last year. This is a different team."

Dave Fairbank can be reached at 247-4637 or by e-mail at dfairbank@dailypress.com

SATURDAY'S GAMES

* Virginia Tech vs. East Carolina, in Charlotte, N.C., noon, ESPN.

* Southern California at Virginia, 3:30 p.m., ABC 8 13.

ONLINE EXTRA: To read more of Dave Fairbank's columns, go to dailypress.com/fairbank.